Review: ZTE V5 3 4G Phablet

ZTE is going full on ahead into the limelight with the ZTE V5 3 4G, a smartphone that is formidably priced against the Moto G and others. ZTE has upgraded its previous V5 and has brought it into the market with really great specifications that would break even the top phones. The ZTE V5 3 4G runs Android 5.1with the Nubia Skin on top much better than its predecessor. and for now it is exclusively available with our friends at GearBest.

Now Let's get into the review and see how the new ZTE V5 3 4G changes the game with this premise.

Look and feel

The ZTE V5's look does take some of its cues from HTC and that makes the phone look fabulous, and there is a reassuring feel when you hold the phone because of its superior build quality, the phone comes with a metal body that also falls in the plus side because this makes the phone feel more premium than what it costs.

ZTE also brings an affection with the color blue as when the panel is open everything inside is blue which looks good, and also in the front where the soft touch buttons are located are also with a blue backlight that does not hurt the eyes but is a good eye soothing tinge of blue. the front soft touch buttons are a hollow circle in the middle and single dots on either side of the circle which may have been done so that the device could be shipped with windows or android which so ever the software team had chosen to go with.

Above the display, there is the front-facing camera and the earpiece. This time around ZTE went with really low bezels on the sides of the screen though the same cannot be said for the top and the bottom bezels. On the right is the power/wake button, which is easily accessible, and the volume rocker is on the left. Both these hardware buttons have good reach. The primary camera on the rear slightly comes out compared to the back. The lower half of the rear has the speakers.

 

This time around ZTE has also added a fingerprint sensor on the back.

Specifications and software

This time the ZTE V5 comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 SoC with the 64 bit architecture under the hood. The Octa-Core processor is clocked at 1.5 & 1 GHz with integrated Adreno 405 GPU. There is 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage, the storage can be expanded with the help of a microSD card.

The primary camera is a 13MP shooter it sports a Sony Exmor RS sensor, and an LED flash for low-light situations. There is also a 5-megapixel front-facing camera. ZTE also provided a 3000mAh battery that for sure will run the whole day without a need to recharge. It can connect to the 850/900/1800/1900/2100MHz frequency bands. There is Wi-Fi and Bluetooth version 4.0 for wireless connectivity options.

This time around ZTE went for a 5.5 incher rather than a 5 inch screen like its predecessor, the display comes with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 with a pixel density of 401 ppi. And believe us that is a great FHD Screen, one of the bests we tested out. The screen comes with Dragontrail glass for protection.

The ZTE V5 runs Android 5.1, ZTE has added its own Nubia skin on top of Android 5.1. The problems were that with this skin comes with alot of animations, which would slow down the device considerably during daily use, but now with such a good processor and 2GB of RAM this issue has been dealt with.

Camera

The rear camera is a 13MP shooter with a Sony Exmor RS sensor which takes great photos and the front shooter is also a good 5MP shooter which also takes great pics, and selfies but we would suggest for you to use the Google Camera or any other app because we feel the camera app provided preloaded is a bit childish and could have been better.

Thanks to the Sony Exmor RS sensor, the 13-megapixel primary camera captures really good details with noise levels kept to a minimum. These images have warm, natural colours provided they are captured from a distance. The lens cannot easily focus on subjects close to the camera, and as a result we ended up with an out-of-focus subject more often than not. In low-light conditions though, the camera is not that great and that was a bit of a disappointment for us. The 5-megapixel front-facing camera takes soft-focussed images and smoothes out most of the details which results in a watercolor effect. The captured 1080p video looked good with details mostly intact but the exposure was off for most part and so our recorded clips looked very dim.

Performance

We did not find any kinks with the performance rather than the phone would get a little warm to the touch and that can be blamed upon the Snapdragon 615 chipset. The video player managed easily to play all of the HD Videos that we threw towards it without any problem, even the most heavily encoded 40mbps one.

The Speaker distorted near to highest volumes but that said you would not be able to take it to the highest volume as it gets pretty loud only in the middle settings, taking it full way would just be torturing your ears. The bundled earphones are okay and not the greatest but would get the stuff done. The quality of sound during calls was very impressive with a phone which is such low cost and we didn't face any drop in network where there was congestion.

In our battery life test, the phone easily got us through the day which is really, really good as per the standards today set by other manufacturers.

Verdict

This new iteration of the ZTE V5 is a great step forward and at such a low price and such good specifications it should not be a matter to ask wether to go for this phone or not it should be a closed eyes buy. And moreover our friends at gearbest are offering a $20 discount for the readers of Beetel Bite you can get it for $179.99 rather than the price others will buy it at and that is 199.99. Just Click Here, Buy, And enter the Coupon Code - ZTEV5GB.